1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method and apparatus for simply and conveniently tracking a target object appearing in a monitored video.
2. Description of the Related Art
Many businesses and homes now use surveillance cameras to monitor and capture images occurring in particular locations that the user wants to protect or secure. For example, FIG. 1 illustrates a surveillance system including sixteen surveillance cameras CAM 1 to CAM 16 that capture images of subjects at corresponding areas, and transmit the captured images to a Digital Video Recorder (DVR) located at a remote place.
The DVR then displays the images captured by the surveillance cameras on a monitor, and also records the captured images in a storage medium, such as a hard disk or an optical disk. Further, unique channel numbers CH 1 to CH 16 are allocated to the sixteen cameras of FIG. 1, respectively, and managed. The DVR then displays each channel on a different portion of a display or on different displays so the user can monitor the different locations.
Further, a user can view previously recorded images using the DVR. That is, the DVR reads compressed video data recorded in the storage medium in response to the user's request, restores the compressed data, and displays the monitored video on the monitor screen. The user can also search for particular time and channel information using an input device, and the DVR searches and plays only data corresponding to the input time and channel information among video data recorded in the storage medium.
However, the user often wants more detailed information about a particular object or person in the video, and therefore must manually view much of the stored video to determine this information. This process is often time-consuming and cumbersome.